World’s first legislation on AI- European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (the “EU AI Act”) – December 09, 2023

On December 09, 2023 the European parliament and the council agreed on a legal framework for Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), which is claimed to be the first legal framework on AI in the world. The European Parliament is yet to vote on the proposed AI Act next year, which is anticipated to come into force two years later in 2026. The following are the key components of the proposed EU AI Act:

1. The act applies to all the providers and deployers of in-scope AI systems that are used in or produce an effect within the region of EU.
2. The act exempts the use of AI systems for military or defence purposes, research & innovation and non-professional reasons.
3. They also intend to ban the use of AI systems for emotion recognition in workplace, for untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or for CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases.
4. The compliance/requirement under the EU AI Act is going to be dependent on the level of risk posed by the AI system.

The fines for non-compliance/violation of the EU AI Act may go up to €35 million or 7% of the global annual turnover of the organisation which is liable for the violation.